Sweden ramps up industrial espionage fight

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14 January 2013

17:34 CET+01:00

Industrial espionage directed against Swedish companies and research institutions is on the rise, according to intelligence officials, prompting new inter-agency intelligence coordination to protect national security.

On Monday, Sweden's main intelligence services announced that in December they launched new efforts to coordinate their counter-espionage efforts.

The National Coordination against Serious IT Threats (Nationell samverkan till skydd mot allvarliga IT-hot, NSIT) involves the coordinated analysis of threats and vulnerabilities, as well as the development of protective measures to make it harder to gain unauthorized access targets vital to Sweden's national interest.

The efforts, which involves Swedish security service Säpo, military intelligence agency MUST as well as Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets radioanstalt - FRA), focus on national security threats, rather than disruptive hacker attacks and fraud, the agencies said in a statement.

Increasingly, foreign powers like Russia, China, and India are mentioned among the countries looking to gain access to technical know-how and trade secrets from Swedish companies, Svergies Radio (SR) reported.

"They want to get at information in areas where we have technological expertise, such as the defence industry but also within aviation and space technology, pharmacology and food production,” FRA spokesman Fredrik Wallin told SR.

"We lose a great deal of value when research results both from companies and universities are stolen. It has the potential to affect our competitive edge."

The government has said it wants to develop an early warning system to protect against IT-attacks, according to SR.

The agencies explained that NSIT doesn't involve any new powers, but rather increased coordination between Sweden's intelligence agencies to "use their most specialized competencies" more effectively.